Eric Ambler – Cause for Alarm

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1930s setting, Book Review, Cause for Alarm, Eric Ambler, Espionage, Italy

Espionage and armament sales in the slow build up to the Second World War

Eric Ambler’s spy novels do follow a set formula, which sometimes works magnificently, and sometimes leaves a little dissatisfaction. Had I never read any Ambler before, I might have liked this one, one of his great five earlier novels written in the build-up to the Second World War and its early days, with less of a slight niggle. Hugely enjoyable, and in the main tightly written, as always, but lacking the brilliance of my personal favourite, The Mask Of Dimitrios.

Ambler’s politics were of the left, and he was someone who saw the dangers of fascist politics quite early. His espionage novels do not involve sophisticated lantern-jawed heroes , imbued with glamour and steely masculinity, saving the State. Instead, his heroes almost invariably are quite ordinary men who are not professional spies or spy killers, but who unwittingly, unwillingly find themselves in dangerous situations as politics and history unfold around them. He is interested in the ‘little man’ caught up in something he doesn’t understand – someone almost an innocent abroad – and, at times, a fool because he fails to understand that innocence is often dangerous ignorance.

So it is here. Nicholas Marlow is an engineer, recently engaged, and recently made redundant – we are in the pre-war thirties, and jobs not easy to find. Marlow is getting a little desperate as he wants a job in order to marry. And then he discovers one for which he is almost a perfect fit. A British firm, Spartacus, is supplying shell-cases to Italian companies. It is late 1936, and Germany and Italy, two countries with Fascist leaders, have already formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. The British company had a British man in Milan who had been creating and managing the business opportunities for trade with Italian armaments firms, but this man had recently died in a hit-and-run accident.

They are looking for an Italian speaker (tick) who is also an engineer who can talk the tech specs (tick) and if possible, someone who is a salesman. Marlowe is not the latter, but otherwise is perfect, and, as no one applying for the job carries the triple kill, he gets it by virtue of the more important first two requirements. And off he goes to Milan, where things appear to be, almost immediately, shady. There are a couple of dodgy or incompetent personnel working in the Milan office. His predecessor had been living in a palatial accommodation he should not have been able to afford on his salary, and, almost immediately Marlowe is schmoozed by a couple of very different characters, each of whom warns him against the other. There are signposts for the reader, and for Marlow himself, which immediately render one more trustworthy than the other. An oleaginous General, a Yugoslav, and a bluff, stocky man with a prize-fighter’s nose, unruly hair, blue eyes, an energetic manner, an American accent and a Russian name.

              La Scala, Milan in 1932. A scene happens here!

And then Marlow’s is summoned by the police to present his documents. His passport is taken away for inspection, and promptly lost. His mail is also being steamed open and read by person or person’s unknown. A lot of people seem to be interested in an innocent salesman selling armaments

Ambler does not labour the clearly ambiguous situation Marlow finds himself in, or that Spartacus itself is engaged in, but here is where ‘innocence’ and dangerous ignorance begin to come together, and the reader, not to mention Marlow himself, have to think that most actions come with agendas, and we need to consider some kind of morality :

If Spartacus were willing to sell shell-production machinery and someone else were willing to buy it, it was not for me to discuss the rights and wrongs of the business. I was merely an employee. It was not my responsibility. Hallett would probably have had something to say about it, but Hallett was a socialist. Business was business. The thing to do was to mind one’s own

Quite quickly, the innocent abroad is in a position of danger, without any real understanding of why and how

This is a terrific, intelligent page-turner. There are a couple of coincidences and deviations too far : I was not quite sure why the encounter with a mathematician was placed in the mix, it seemed a bit of an unnecessary diversion., though in the foreword, which, as is my won’t, I read afterwards, John Preston (foreword writer in my Penguin Modern Classics edition) argues for it. It’s no spoiler to have mentioned it here, though, I promise!.

Ambler is always worth reading. There are thrills, and, in the main, plausible adventures, not to mention great characters. He is always free from jingoism and there is little endemic anti-Semitism in his writing, something which was regrettably common in many books penned at this time, before later events showed what a bed-rock of racial or group prejudice could lead to.

Cause For Alarm Amazon UK
Cause For Alarm Amazon USA

a 1951 noir film with the same title is unrelated to Ambler’s novel

Eric Ambler – Journey Into Fear

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Book Review, Eric Ambler, Espionage, Journey Into Fear, Second World War, Spy Stories

The delights of becoming further acquainted with the Turkish Secret Police, circa 1939/1940

Eric Ambler represents the art of writing a good, taut, spy thriller, which also instructs beautifully about time, place, politics and character, extremely well.

Having recently re-read The Mask of Dimitrios, I thought I’d take a little saunter through some of his other books, recently republished by Penguin Modern Classics, delightfully available again.

Ambler, a writer of Left sensibilities, is wonderfully free of the bedrock of Anti-Semitism which rumbled under some other writing of the time. There was a general Zeitgeist of unconscious, received, racism, until the horrific events of Holocaust began to make some question their inherent attitudes. This is not to say that those on the left were of necessity free from this, just that Ambler is clearer about ascribing venality, brutality and shadiness to individuals, rather than to races.

He’s not a writer who hangs around on description, but one who is economical and taut, whilst, it seems, fairly effortlessly describing what the reader needs in order to believe place, time, idea, narrative, character and relationship.

This particular book once again pits someone who is innocent of perfidy and derring-do, into the heart of a world where murder is not just local, individual, but is swept up in the fates of nations.

Graham is an engineer. His speciality is in high powered long range guns, and he is in Turkey helping development of missiles in the early stages of the Second World War. Turkey at this point had neutrality, though there were certainly factions wishing for closer association with the Allied Powers.

On the eve of his departure back to Britain, someone tries to kill the rather conventional, peaceable Graham. It turns out a conspiracy is afoot (isn’t there always) which he hears about when taken to meet Colonel Haki. How I cheered; the definitely sinister, even if apparently on the side of the angels, Turkish Secret Service high-up, whom everyone is rightly nervous of, also featured in The Mask Of Dimitrios.

In order to confound his known would be murderer, Haki arranges for Graham to be smuggled out of the country via a small cheap passenger ship. And, unsurprisingly what we have is an espionage orientated version of that wonderful classic – the country house murder. That is, a group of people holed up inescapably together. Wrongdoing, we know, is on the cards, there is at least one murderer, but everyone will turn out, probably, to be not quite who they seem to be, so, everyone is potentially suspect. And our hero, who has breezed through life in many ways like an innocent schoolboy, makes that journey into fear.

The book was later turned into a film starring Joseph Cotten as Graham (the English engineer became American), Dolores del Rio as the nightclub dancer Josette, a the vamp with a heart of……well, we aren’t quite sure, really, and Orson Welles as Colonel Haki. Certain liberties were inevitably taken, but I like this take on the initial murder attempt on Graham (much more mundanely done in the book)

Where this book differs from the domestic murder mystery is of course the involvement of the wider stage – the machinery of war, all who profit by it and the nations engaged in it.

There are some almost predictable red herrings, real sharks, wolves in sheep’s clothing and vice-versa, but all is done with panache, enjoyable tension, most masterfully. Our gathering of passengers on the ship is as satisfyingly memorable and eccentric a bunch as could be wished for.

Joseph Cotten as Graham and Orson Welles plus hat as Colonel Haki

This is one which should delight the aficionados of both old fashioned murder mysteries, and political/espionage thrillers alike. I shall read yet more Ambler, and sincerely hope to encounter Colonel Haki (shivers nervously) again.

4 1/2 stars, rounded up to 5 – only because I do prefer Charles Latimer, the urbane, witty central character of The Mask of Dimitrios as a more amusing quicker witted companion than the more innocent Graham

Journey Into Fear Amazon UK
Journey Into Fear Amazon USA

Eric Ambler – The Mask Of Dimitrios

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Book Review, Eric Ambler, Espionage, The Mask Of Dimitrios

A Masterclass In How To Write A Spy Thriller : Europe Between The Wars

Finding what to read next after finishing a book which satisfied on every level, can be a real problem – well it can for me, as the stunningly successful book is one which shakes me up, and continues to make me think, feel, reflect and react for some time after I finish reading it.  It then proceeds to hang around for a bit, insinuating itself between me and my next book, and, generally, will be almost bound to make me disappointed in that next read.

So……I finished Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to The Deep North roughly a week ago, and that met my criteria of being a great book – not just the story, the characters, the quality of the writing, but it was ‘about stuff’ and engaged my intellect, my heart, my guts and has continued to make me reflect on its layered ‘stuff’

So……….I have picked up and put down, half read, read in disappointment books which don’t make it onto here. But how to break the spell? Reading something purely for entertainment won’t work, as I still want ‘stuff’ . Reading something where my little miss picky is going to be irritated by writing which is not of the same calibre won’t work either. Only a re-read will do, And the inspired choice was Eric Ambler’s The Mask Of Dimitrios.

I love these books written in the interwar years, by writers with an interest in world affairs, thrillers with a finger on the pulse of international affairs. Graham Greene, who wrote several of these (Stamboul Train, A Gun For Sale, The Ministry of Fear) classing them as entertainments, won’t do for me at THIS point, because Greene is a writer who always takes the reader right inside his characters, creating empathy, unsettling, and even in ‘the entertainments’, engages viscerally, making the reader feel and suffer with his characters. Flanagan wrung me too hard emotionally, and I want, at this point, a cooler, distanced engagement.

Ambler is perfect. He writes wonderful, absorbing, twisting stories, and his characters are plausible, interesting, and of a piece with themselves, rather than purely ciphers. But, – he doesn’t engage (at least not in this one) with any personal stuff, nothing intimate, nothing of relationship. Hearts are not stirred, shaken and broken, though bodies might be!

The Mask of Dimitrios is in many ways an old-fashioned, intelligent thriller, displaying all the craft of disciplined good writing.

…propaganda always begins with words, but soon it proceeds to deeds. When there are no facts to support lies, facts must be made

The central character, Latimer, is an academic and writer. He has written books on economics, but, latterly, has become successful as a writer of popular, well written detective stories. Travelling abroad whilst he works on finding a plot for his next novel, he happens, by chance encounter, to meet a high ranking Turkish colonel, through whom he gets drawn into hearing the story of Dimitrios, a man who evaded capture across Europe, for over a decade. He was implicated in several murders, political assassination attempts, was a mercenary, and ran a drug ring. In short, he was some kind of personification of the master criminal.

Latimer, almost idly, is intrigued to see, as a writer of detective stories, if he himself can do some detection into all the many gaps in Dimitrios’ history.

By making his central character a writer, not a professional investigator, criminal, journalist, policier, secret service agent or political activist, Ambler has found the perfect method for instructing the reader in any background information which is needed, without the novel degenerating into a lecture on policing, the autopsy room, the drug trade, espionage and the like. Latimer, like us, is innocent of these things and will need instruction. Ambler uses an old fashioned, third person narration, which works perfectly well – the author as a cool, cerebral narrator of events. Latimer seeks out various experts along the way who can do things like translate official records written in Bulgarian, explain how spies are recruited and run, and the like. All these experts are also interesting, rounded, individualistic characters, who have unique voices; not just vehicles for information.

Presently, however, the floor was cleared and a number of the girls who had disappeared some minutes before to replace their clothes with a bunch or two of primroses and a great deal of suntan lotion, did a short dance. They were followed by a youth dressed as a woman who sang songs in German; then they reappeared without their primroses to do another dance

What did however strike me forcibly is that what is absolutely missing in the novel is ‘the personal’ None of the characters are given any domestic background. We know nothing about husbands, wives, parents, children, siblings or friends. Everyone is engaged in the business of the central story, and the ‘wants’ and motives are, in the main, greed, money, power. This is a deadly and cerebral crossword puzzle of detection. And utterly successful at that.

Ambler has the reader as feverishly unable to leave the story alone, and desirous of knowing ‘what happens next’ as Latimer himself. And he does this with an incisive writing style, and what is clearly his own urbane sense of wit and humour. This is also given as one of Latimer’s engaging qualities, keeping the reader closely engaged with, and rooting for, our central character

on his face was a look that Latimer had not seen there before. It was the look of the expert attending to the business he understood perfectly. There was a sort of watchful repose in his face that reminded Latimer of a very old and experienced cat contemplating a very young and inexperienced mouse

A stylish, engaging and pacey thriller, whisking the reader effortlessly through several European countries during the 20s and early 30s

The Mask Of Dimitrios Amazon UK
The Mask Of Dimitrios Amazon USA

The book was made into a noir film with Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet. If you intend to read the book, you might choose not to see this clip, until you have done so, as it contains spoilers.